In the first hearing on the government’s justification for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a federal judge ruled Thursday that five Algerian men were held unlawfully for nearly seven years and ordered their release.

By the way, the judge who ordered the release was appointed to the bench by Bush himself the First, and in 2005 had ruled that the defendants in question had no habeas corpus rights, so this certainly isn't a case of a liberal judge tweaking the nose of the outgoing administration.

As I've said before, I'm really glad that President-elect Obama has made closing Guantanamo Bay a priority; it's a stain on our national reputation. We cannot claim to be a nation of laws when our own government is trying to use every possible dodge to keep prisoners from proving their innocence.